


in my head

by iwritetrash



Series: be all my sins remembered [3]
Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alfred is the Other Woman, Alfred misses Edward, Angst, Friends With Benefits, Introspection, M/M, Past Affairs, Past Infidelity, Post-Break Up, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 13:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13571160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwritetrash/pseuds/iwritetrash
Summary: alfred had imagined the moment when edward asked him to run away with him a million times over, and never once did he say no. until it really happened, that is.





	in my head

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know why i put this in a modern setting and yet i still couldn't make them happy, but here is part 3! i was going for supercut vibes in this part, so i would totally recommend that song if you're looking for something to listen to while you read. 
> 
> (also i set this up as a series and of course i couldn't resist a hamlet reference..)
> 
> thank you so much to [Whydidtheydothis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whydidtheydothis/pseuds/Whydidtheydothis) for proofreading and giving me a hand with this!
> 
> enjoy!

Alfred has to take most of the credit for how things ended between him and Edward. He could have gone along with things, nodded and agreed with what Edward was saying, and climbed into Edward’s car to drive off to god-only-knows-where, and maybe they’d be somewhere together right now. Because Edward had offered him the one thing he’d ever wanted, and in all of Alfred’s wildest imaginations of that precise moment, he had never once imagined himself saying no.

But he had. 

And now Edward was gone.

They hadn’t spoken for a few months now, since the day in that hotel room when Alfred threw Edward’s wild ideas back in his face. Alfred thought maybe these feelings would pass eventually, but the time ticking by has done little to heal the heartache which seems to be an ever-present aspect of his daily life now. He makes excuses for it, tells himself maybe he just needs to meet someone new, but every time he tries he ends up crying halfway through making out with someone, or he finds himself imagining they’re Edward, and he ends up right back at square one.

He wonders how Edward is feeling, if he’s still hung up on Alfred, if he misses him, or if he’s settled back into his domestic life with Florence. Of course he’s still daydreaming about Edward, Alfred is a dreamer, after all, but he finds the details are a little fuzzy now. His memory of the way Edward’s voice sounds isn’t so clear anymore, because it’s been so long since they’ve spoken. Alfred doesn’t quite remember Edward’s smell anymore, or the sound of his laugh, or what it felt like when they were curled up together in bed. 

How is it possible that he can miss things he hardly remembers now?

Alfred spends far too much time stuck in a daydream, replaying his time with Edward, right back to the first day they met. He filters out all the bad moments, all the heartache and the nights spent aching for more; instead, he lives in a world of flashbacks to the time when they got drunk and Edward pushed Alfred around a supermarket in a trolley at 1am, and the time when Edward had showed up at his apartment in the middle of the night and dragged him outside to look at the stars because there was a meteor shower, and the time when they got lost on their way to a concert and ended up pulling over and getting dinner at a service station instead.

Now that he thinks about it, most of those things happened before they started sleeping together, before things got messy and their hearts got broken every time they met. Once they’d started sleeping together, they’d started hanging out less, in order to compensate, supposedly. Still, Alfred remembers those nights in the hotel, light from the neon sign filtering in through thin curtains, making it look like the room was glowing. Those memories were magical, even if his heart broke the second Edward left.

It hadn’t been the perfect Hollywood romance, but it had been _something_ , and it had been just enough to keep Alfred holding on. Now it was as though he had been set adrift, anchor cut loose to leave him floating the middle of some unknown ocean. Here he was, stranded without his best friend, with nobody to turn to, or talk to. 

He had Wilhelmina, a friend he’d known since he was five years old when he met her in the school playground, but he hadn’t dared mention the fact that he was sleeping with Edward to her. Florence was her friend as well, and, though Alfred doubted Wilhelmina would willingly expose them, he couldn’t drag her into this mess as well. Besides, he knew how she would react, how disappointed she would be in him, and it wasn’t worth thinking about too much. 

This is a heartbreak he must learn to heal on his own.

That doesn’t stop him wasting away the hours reminiscing when he ought to be working, wondering where Edward is now, what he’s doing, _how_ he’s doing. Perhaps he’s romanticising things too much, looking back with rose-tinted glasses on, but he can’t help it. He misses Edward more than he can possibly express, and he doesn’t just miss sleeping with him, he misses being his friend, and just meeting up for coffee or getting drunk together or watching something shitty on TV and criticising it relentlessly and laughing until their sides hurt.

In his mind, he imagines a scenario  where he had done everything right, where he had said yes and the two of them had run away together. Maybe they would have gone to live in Scotland, where Edward grew up, or maybe they would have gone to France instead, and they’d buy a nice house in the country, or get an flat in the middle of Paris. Wherever they were, they’d be together. Alfred isn’t sure what they’d do for work; maybe he could write a book like he’s been saying he would since he left university, and Edward could take up something new, like carpentry, or something like that.

It’s a nice idea, and Alfred spends every single day wishing he’d just said yes when Edward asked, so that it could be a reality.

But, again, he didn’t.

And he had said no for a reason. He had said no for Edward, because it was the best thing for him.

So Alfred drinks and smokes and he decides to write a fucking book anyway, because maybe he’s not somewhere far away with Edward, but he can still write, so he will. He quits his job, because he has enough money to get by without it anyway, and he starts to write, and he pours his emotions out onto the page, and it feels strangely cathartic. Until he stops writing, of course, and then everything comes back.

So he writes, and he still drinks and smokes a lot, and he hardly sleeps because when he does he dreams of Edward, and he takes down all the photographs of them which are in his flat, and he deletes Edward’s number even though he memorised it years ago anyway, and he boxes up all the hoodies and shirts and sweatpants he stole from Edward and puts them in the back of his wardrobe, and he tells himself he’s getting better.

He’s lying to himself, but maybe that’s what he needs, for now at least.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading <3


End file.
